Nvidia announced at CES that, while quad-core smartphones have been absent from the show, they are coming very soon.

CES is not an ideal launching pad for phones as it is more focused on tablets and computers, Mike Rayfield, general manager of the mobile business unit at Nvidia, told PC World.

But, "this is the year of quad-core," Rayfield said. He said that some new models based on Nvidia's Tegra 3 processor, which has more phone design wins than its dual-core predecessor, will be previewed at the Mobile World Congress 2012 next month.

Meanwhile, quad-core tablets have been making the rounds at CES. Asus is displaying the "world's first seven-inch quad-core tablet," the Eee Pad MemO, while ZTE and Acer are both pimping their own Tegra 3-equipped tabs.

ZTE's T-98 is also a seven-inch quad-core tab. We'll see if it gets into any scuffles with Asus over that "world's first" designation

See, thats what many would think when they hear "quad-core." The problem is that the Tegra 3 is a 5-core processor, 4 power cores and one companion core limited to 500Mhz. The Companion core acts as an extreme low power standby core, with the 4 extras powering up when needed. If it works as well as they say, for idle tasks it should have a much better battery life than the Tegra 3, while still being much more powerful when needed.

Really, this is what the smartphone needs more than anything and may be the reason Microsoft hasn't allowed any of the current dual-core systems on WP7. They may simply make the jump to the Tegra 3 because of its potential battery savings over dual core systems

A low power A7 core for when it's in your pocket combined with 2 high performance A15 cores when it's in your hand seems like the ideal solution but it may be a while before we start to see that. Until I can connect my phone to an LCD and it can run the latest Total War game with a bluetooth mouse I don't care what the GPU can do.

I Work in Telecommunication's in Australia and have had the opportunity in that time to have hands on with virtually every smartphone made in the last 4-5 Years. Granted, the iPhone release's of the 2008-2010 Markets had no real direct competitor. Compared to the first Android phone's (HTC Dream and Magic) the iPhone was leaps and bounds ahead of its time. Trust me, i owned a HTC Dream and it was a sluggish and pain in the ass experience :P

However, that just cant be said anymore. Both the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S were released into a market of evolving smart-phones that put up a fight and they just are not that stand-outish anymore. We have more customers coming in each day purchasing Galaxy S2's, Nexus's and especially the Sony's Xperia Series. And trust me when i say that there are still Android phones out there that run slower than a stream of molasses, but the Galaxy Nexus and S2 walk all over the iPhone 4S in cross-platform experience comparisons (And physical versatility haha).

Android 4.0 is a lot more enjoyable to use than the iPhone from the point of view of somebody who used to own a iPhone 3GS, in nearly every aspect.